In the near future, police officer Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) stands accused of killing his wife, Nicole Raven (Annabelle Wallis). But it’s not in a court of law that he must stand trial. It’s in the Mercy Court.
What is the Mercy Court? Mercy Court was created to use AI judges to determine the accused’s guilt or innocence. In a plot twist, the Mercy Court was created with Chris’s help.
Now, he’s got to figure out a way to prove his innocence before his 90 minutes run out.
We’re going to examine Mercy not for how good or bad it was. We’re going to take a look to see if Mercy offers leadership lessons. In my mind, it does.
Let’s check out the leadership lessons in Mercy.
Quotes And Leadership Lessons From Mercy
1. We may believe we don’t make mistakes, but we do:
The film opens with Chris strapped to the judgment and execution chair. He’s getting ready to face AI Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson). He doesn’t know what’s happening.
A narrator is narrating about the Mercy Court. One sentence tells the accused to remember that Mercy doesn’t make mistakes.
As the movie progresses, we see that Mercy has made mistakes.
Leaders can get caught up in the authority they wield. They can believe they’re infallible.
But we are. We can make mistakes. Plenty of them.
It’s not the fact that we make mistakes. The problem arises when we fail to recognize our fallibility.
2. Judge Maddox:
What you have done in the past is no longer relevant.
Judge Maddox lays out the rules of the court. She explains what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and why.
Chris had been an integral part of creating the Mercy Court. Judge Maddox recognizes his past actions. Then she lands a crushing blow.
Judge Maddox tells Chris that his past actions are no longer relevant. Only the actions of what he is accused of doing.
Guess what, folks? You may have done some great things in the past. You may have turned your organization around, increased sales, or even saved a life.
But that only matters for a limited amount of time. Eventually, your past actions are irrelevant.
We can’t live in the past. You wouldn’t let your employees live off their past accomplishments. Neither can you.
Your past actions are no longer relevant.
3. Britt Raven (Kylie Rogers):
But it didn’t work.
Chris tries to get in touch with his daughter, Britt. He needs her to know he didn’t kill her mother. He also needs her help in solving the case.
Britt finally accepts the court’s call. She tells Chris that she didn’t remove the knife from her mother’s chest.
Why? Because it’s what Chris had taught her to do. You don’t remove a knife from a stab wound. It would hasten death.
She listened. Nicole still died.
There’s so much leadership advice dispensed. In this blog, other blogs, books, seminars, and beyond. Leaders are sharing what they’ve learned that works.
You try to implement the training you’ve been given. You follow every step… to the T.
And it doesn’t work.
Don’t give up hope. There will be situations where the leadership advice you’re given doesn’t work. This doesn’t mean it’s bad advice. The advice just didn’t work in your exact situation.
That’s okay. Try something new. Figure it out. Find out what works.
4. Leaders can’t make up their minds before getting the facts:
Chris knew how the Mercy Court worked. The court was there for criminals who had no defense.
Judge Maddox shows Christ the clock. He has 90 minutes to make his case. If he fails to lower the probability of guilt below 92%, the chair he’s strapped to will execute him.
Chris knows the system. He knew the clock didn’t matter. Judge Maddox had already made up her mind. Chris was guilty in the eyes of the court.
We discover Chris is innocent. He hadn’t killed his wife. Who did? Rob Nelson (Chris Sullivan), the brother of David Webb (Ross Gosla). David was the first person to be executed by Mercy Court.
The Mercy Court had already given Chris a probability of guilt of over 97%. Judge Maddox had made up her mind, regardless of what she had said.
We can’t be like the Mercy Court. We cannot make our decisions before hearing all of the facts.
We’ve seen this done with employees and the mistakes they’ve made. We give them a judgment before we hear the who, how, when, and why.
Listen to the facts. The facts should change your mind.
5. Look for new routes/ways:
Jacueline ‘JAQ’ Diallo (Kali Reis) was Chris’ partner on the LAPD force. He has the court call her to help collect evidence.
They discovered Nicole had a burner phone. She had made a call to another burner phone. Then they discovered where the other burner phone was.
The roads were difficult to navigate. JAQ wouldn’t be able to make it there in a speedy manner. That didn’t matter.
JAQ had another way to travel. She would use the high-speed hovering police bike to take to the air and get there quickly.
While we don’t have high-speed hovering bikes, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for new routes or ways of doing things. Sometimes the old way isn’t the most effective.
Look for proper shortcuts. It could be the proper use of AI, hiring another person, or asking for help.
There’s always a way to do things more efficiently. Find those ways.
6. Don’t let guilt consume you:
Chris’s partner, Ray Vale (Kenneth Choi), had been killed on duty. Chris lived with the guilt of his partner’s death.
Why?
Chris had been on the phone with Nicole while Ray was making a stop. The perpetrator shot at Ray, then backed into Ray, squashing him between the truck and the police car.
Instead of taking Ray to the hospital, Chris chose to pursue the perpetrator. This resulted in the loss of Ray’s life.
Chris never got over Ray’s death. He lived with the guilt and went to the bottle to deal with it.
We have to be careful about the guilt we let into our lives. Leading others can require us to make many difficult decisions. Some of those decisions will hurt others.
Do you feel the guilt? Sure.
But you can’t let the guilt consume you. Otherwise, you will find yourself hitting the bottle, lashing out in anger, or worse.
Find healthy ways to deal with the guilt you will encounter.
7. Dig deeper:
The Mercy Court allowed the accused to examine all the evidence. What evidence is there? Anything and everything you can think of. Everybody’s phones, cameras, and more are tracked.
Chris was able to access Britt’s phone conversations and video calls. There was one where she was talking to her boyfriend.
During the call, Britt hears a noise. She thinks it is Chris coming home and quickly ends the call. When he wasn’t there, she began to search the house, recording it for social media.
She couldn’t find anything. She chalks it up to the house being haunted.
However, when Chris examines the video, he sees that their basement door was cracked. Having the court zoom in closer, he sees a hand in the crack of the door.
Chris didn’t let his first glance be the last glance. He dug deeper.
You may get the facts. You may believe they are what others say they are. But have you dug deeper? Have you examined them for inconsistencies?
Great leaders know they have to dig deeper, below the surface. The deeper they dig, the more information they pull out.
Don’t let your first glance be your last. Review things at least once or twice.
8. Don’t jump to conclusions:
Holt Charles (Rafi Gavron) was a coworker of Nicole’s. Chris had ruled out quite a few of her other coworkers and focused in on him. He believed Holt was guilty after he answered the Court’s call to Rob and gave them the runaround.
That wasn’t the case.
Holt gave them the runaround because Rob had helped him when Rob discovered that Holt was skimming product. He was trying to return the favor.
Rob’s act of kindness made Holt think Rob was a good guy. He wasn’t.
It’s easy to jump to conclusions, whether good or bad. We’ve got to prevent ourselves from doing this.
9. Chris Raven:
We both need to accept the fact that we failed people.
Chris proved his innocence. This rocked Judge Maddox’s AI world. She couldn’t understand how she could be wrong, especially when Chris went with his gut.
Judge Maddox had failed people. So had Chris.
He admitted that to Judge Maddox. Now, he encouraged her to accept the fact that she had failed others.
We’ve got to accept the fact that we’re going to fail people. We have failed people.
We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes.
Be willing to accept your mistakes and move forward.
10. You can’t make things fit that don’t:
We discover JAQ may not be the squeaky-clean cop we were led to believe. In fact, she had planted evidence in the first Mercy Court case.
Why did she plant evidence? She wanted to make sure the case against David was a slam dunk… so she planted his cell phone at the scene of the murder.
Now, an innocent man had been executed and the system compromised.
It’s easy to want to find a way to make everything fit. To have a slam dunk on the new product.
However, you can’t be willing to break the law, engage in unethical behavior, or change the facts. None of those is right. None of those helps your case.
Instead, be willing to roll with what you have. If it’s the truth, it’s enough.
